World Tree MUSH

The Ring of Fire is defended, an abandoned Roman-style stone fortress in an arid region has been repurposed for the use. Black-scaled lizardmen man the walls, wielding a mixture of bows, staves, spears, axes and brass knuckles. Though they do not wear much armour, what they do wear is well-made steel adorned with red cloth. Temulin, walking alongside the group sighs. "Amal'jaa. If there was any doubt remaining about what Ungust was up to, there isn't any left. Ifrit is their Primal."

From this distance, it's hard to tell how many Amal'jaa there are; much less what all is within the fortress. As such, Temulin offers some more advice. "We only have one shot at this. They will accelerate their schedule once they know they've been discovered. There's not enough of us that they will feel forced into summoning Ifrit out of fear of us alone, but that's our only saving grace.

    "Any weaknesses we should know about? They look pretty tough." mentions Uni as she unslings a bullpup rifle. Bravette's on her shoulder, armoured up with her Rail Gattling attached to her back, making her look a little like a small, off-kilter Guncannon. "I could use my Divinity Driver and give them a flying target to help spread their attacks out more."

Duncan is with the group as well, and he has an idea. "Should one of us try to come in from the front as a distraction?" he inquires. "I have fire magic; it might not be too difficult to get them to believe that I came here to join." He knows that's dangerous, since they might do to him whatever they might have done to the people that have been kidnapped, but he also knows that this crew can probably take him out if that happens, so he's not too terribly worried.

    "I don't think we have time for the subtle approach," Yumi replies to Duncan, shaking her head. "We need to hit them fast and hard, get in and cause chaos before they can find their balance and group up on us. I'm willing to take point, I'm a hard target. Might be able to smash open the gate or a wall, or jump up and over." Straightforward and forceful. Coming from Yumi, not surprising.

    The Ring of Fire... Such a name does not invoke feelings of joy and bliss in Rydia of Mist. So long as it's just a name, though, then she should be fine. Nevertheless, the last Summoner of Mist is here, and she is looking grim.
    "They actually mean to call on Ifrit, then?" She sounds incredulous, even after being filled in on the details. "This is bad, this is very, very bad." The green-haired girl mutters, fingering the dagger at her hip as she eyes the abandoned fortress and the creatures manning its walls.
    "I'll stick to the back row. I'm not that great in a full on fight, but I'll do what I can." She muses to Yumi's suggestion of such a hard hitting, full frontal, assault.

    Emily is looking somewhat troubled.

    She's wearing a black trench coat and a matching wide-brimmed hat, which once again seems to cast unnaturally deep shadows and hides the upper half of her face; she has dark gray hair just a shade or two lighter than her outfit, and four arms. "I can fly as well," she says. "But I suppose I should join in the festivities, somewhere between Rydia and Yumi. My dimensional fields will make it considerably easier to extract anyone in need of rescue." Obviously referring to those staticky portals of hers.

    She tips up the brim of her hat slightly, revealing her typical glowing purple eyes as she peers at the fortress for a moment. "It will be harder to get us in, unless anyone has a convenient map of the fortress I can use," she adds. "Though I suppose suddenly opening it up next to them, or just inside, will be surprising enough."

"They're basically just people. Zealots, and reasonably well-trained, but people. So no special weaknesses." Temulin answers, glancing towards the others. "Honestly, expect them to fight us every step of the way if they notice us trying to rescue their captives or mess with their supplies; so a frontal assault will help draw their attention, and the people best at extraction can do what they're best at. Attack on my signal, ok?" She offers in response to the list of suggestions, as she climbs up her bird.

She quickly takes off, jumps down and lands on the walls, her darkness infused blade cutting deep into the first of the Amal'jaa. It seems that is her signal, it definitely rauses the Amal'jaa into action. More starting to man the walls, and any other fliers can see them quickly shoving some captives they had made down a hatch.

    "Understood. I'll aim to suppress their ranged options so the melee fighters can focus on actually fighting and not getting shot in the back." she replies, glancing at her companion. "Ready partner?"

    Bravette nods, lights her jetpack and unslings her gattling. The pair then take off after Temulin's charge. Bolts of energy and high velocity railgun slugs rain down on any bowmen or those using the weird metal cudgels of mages.

    So her leading the way, Emily and Rydia following along. Right. "Will do," Yumi agrees, giving Temulin a firm nod. As the bird takes flight, Yumi transformed, wrapped in sheets of light that quickly take the shape of armor. Usually, she doesn't pull out Prominence right away; but she's going full tilt. The runes fade into being beside her, followed by the blade itself; her hand clasps on the long handle, and then she's off like a shot.

    While the auri Dark Knight descends from above, and Uni snipes from afar, Yumi Tachibana hurtles straight towards the front gate. As she charges, the entire blade of Prominence begins to glow, first faintly, and then brighter, until the occasional, faint tongue of flame flutters in the air around it for a moment. Infused with magic, the blade shines brightly, and taking a two-handed grip on it, Yumi pushes herself to full speed - until the last instant. Then one boot plants, and the senshi turns all that speed into airborne momentum, swinging her massive, magic-infused blade around for a colossal blow meant not just to destroy the gates, but to *smash* them, and any Amalj'aa unlucky to be within a few yards of the other side. "YAAAA!"

As Temulin mounts up on her bird, Duncan does the same. Nemesis doesn't fly, but that's fine -- she has a beak that pecks and feet that scratch! And as Temulin drops down onto the walls, Duncan rides to the front of the gate, sword drawn (idly, he's a leftie), and gives a loud war cry as he tries to ride down the first of the guards he meets, trying to trample them under the chocobo's sharp-clawed feet.

And just for good measure, he casts Fira on the gates. Not only to weaken them so that they can be destroyed more easily (wood burns, after all), but just for the sheer irony -- that FIRE should be used in trying to destroy people wanting to summon Ifrit.

    Emily nods, and adjusts her hat. "Releasing ..." She hesitates, and glances between Yumi, Duncan, and Rydia. She grimaces. "Releasing ... ugh. Y'know what, fine, I'll just do it. We've got ... we've got lives to save right now. It's ... bigger than just this group." She hesitates for just another moment. "Releasing all capacitor seals!"

    She leaps into the sky, surrounded by three distinct auras, one gold, one silver, and one pearlescent. All three shatter, and in a swirl of silv-- wait, no, in a swirl of glitchy-looking darkness, she changes into a completely black humanoid silhouette, tendrils of shadow stretching out from her.

    She lands right behind Yumi just inside the gate which just got thoroughly destroyed. "Hi guys!" she says, in a distorted version of her usual voice, swinging tendrils wildly to bludgeon the Amal'jaa around her!

    A pure white smile appears amid the darkness, clearly too large for a human face. "So I saw where they're putting the hostages while I was up there!" she says. "Who wants to come with?"

    Attack on Temulin's signal, got it.
    ... There goes Temulin.
    That must be the signal. Though Rydia is left paused for a good moment as the Dark Knight takes off, Uni and Bravette charge after, Yumi rushes the gate.
    And then Duncan casts Fira.
    "Uh..."
    If Yumi gets the gate down that's nice, but the splintering wreckage is now on fire.
    "... Hey?"
    Flaming wreckage is not easy for Rydia to navigate.

Yumi smashes the gate, and Duncan cover it in fire, the few guards out in front are quite unfortunately caught betwene the attacks and the now shattered gate. Fortunately for Rydia, the wood is treated. It's not very good at catching fire, so it quickly stops being a burning wreckage and turns into a smoldering wreckage. There's other fire for her to be worried about, as the thaumaturges on the walls begin casting fire magics of their own at all the intruders, including Rydia. Some of them get sniped down by Uni and Bravette, another falls to Temulin's darkness.

One especially beefy looking thaumaturge walks out of the gates, and casts a spell upon Temulin, who promptly falls over and to the ground. Fortunately for her, there's plenty of others here to keep things going.

    Uni gets fired at, literally. She grunts and stumbles, but seems largely unaffected by the flame magic. She's a bit singed, but not extra crispy like someone else might be in that situation. Bravette's small enough to escape unharmed, but she's out of position on the offending Beastman.

    A bigger fish comes out to fry, and somehow takes Temulin out of contention with a single spell. She shouts to Bravette. "Cover me!"

    Uni then ducks back, hunkering behind a rock to break line of sight, while summoning her Core into her hand, a floating Power symbol. "I hope I have enough for this... Access! Processor Unit set!" A burst of light that pierces the sky erupts from behind the rock, and a moment later, a white-haired, green-eyed girl in a black body suit, sporting wings made of teal light and pieces of metal hovering over her hips, feet and head charges around the rock without touching the groun. The bullpup rifle is now a large railgun, which the CPU Candidate fires. "Playtime's over!" She fires the gun to try and knock the Amal'jaa off his feet, then skids to a stop just past where he was and turns, firing a blue particle beam which detonates on impact with the large Amal'jaa.

    As he's recovering from that, she leaps into the air, bracing against a circular seal of red light and fires again. "You think I'm done with you? BURN!" She fires another beam, a pair of 'bits' deploying to orbit the barrel and contain the now golden energy, which again detonates violently.

    Once you have the momentum, you can't let up. Yumi doesn't stop moving aside from the landing from her leaping attack; the instant she's got her footing, she charges right in through the gate, hurling herself at the first armed Amalj'aa she sees. There's attacks coming in from all sides, and moving the way she is, it's just flat-out impossible to dodge or block every attack - so she doesn't try. She lets fireballs splash against her armor, wincing in pain but keeping on the move; she lets arrows glance off a pauldron, or open shallow cuts in her unnaturally tough skin, without so much as acknowledging them. More serious strikes, she'll deal with, but in large part she's just leaning into supernatural toughness and armor as she fights.

    And her fighting consists of a lot of shockingly quick swings with her massive blade. Disabling blows if she can, but in chaos like this, a lot of them probably aren't getting up again. But squaring off with the little ones quickly becomes a secondary issue when a particularly big lizard puts Temulin on the ground. Instantly, the senshi whips around to charge in; Uni has the attack on, but Temulin's still in danger...

Well, that thaumaturge has kind of made himself Duncan's next target by casting his spell at Temulin. He leaps off of Nemesis -- which she takes as a signal to GET AWAY FROM THE FIRE -- and heads in the direction of the thaumaturge. Being secondarily Fire-aspected, the fire spells may not hurt him as much as the mages want them to.

That said, it's very definitely NOT that the fire spells don't hurt at all; he's probably going to need to be peeled out of his armor when all this is done, and he might be leaving some skin behind. But, that is his 'legend', at least in Baron (before he was branded a traitor, of course) -- Duncan Ritter is a TANK, thus he EATS damage, and it takes a lot to take him down.

Still, though, Duncan can feel his skin blistering under the fire spells he can't quite dodge, and grimaces. Bright side of which, that it just might serve to make him look a little scarier -- those bared teeth under the cruelly-curved beak of his hawk-like helm as he bears down upon the beefy thaumaturge, growling like a monster.

As he nears, his sword glows sharply with a red-edged black glow, and he slashes the blade through the air. Mind you, not as though he's trying to hit the enemy with the sword itself. There's plenty of space between the slash and the thaumaturge. But it's still a danger... because a crescent-shaped arc of red-edged black energy springs from the blade and fires at the thaumaturge. In the din of battle, it's hard to hear the stifled, "Ghn!" that comes after this -- this sword technique uses his life force to accomplish, after all.

...Though as he continues to use his life force for stuff like that, it's only going to make him stronger as the battle goes on. Hopefully he'll have enough time to utilize it...

    It only goes from bad to worse. The gate may be a flaming, splintering wreck, but then the thaumaturges begin slinging their fire at her.
    Rydia's pupils dilate. Her breath hitches in her throat. Her heart hammers in her chest as the flames race towards her.
    The girl chooses to fly. Rushing out of the path of the oncoming fire, the smoldering wrecked gate is like a gateway to paradise by comparison, while the thaumaturges fire on her.
    Rydia baseball slides past the gate and ends in a forward tumble, eating the dirt in a sprawl, before she pushes back up to her feet, wide and wild-eyed.
    "Whyt..." She utters while floored, causing the mists lingering around her to detach and take on the form of her dragon hatchling Eidolon. "Go deal with the prisoners." She huffs, sending her dragon to start wrangling the captives while she takes a beat to catch her breath after nearly getting burned.

    Emily pauses, twists her head 180 degrees to look back at Rydia. "Uh, guys ... oh. Okay -- crap!" She takes half a second to check on Temulin, then scowls, her glowing purple eyes hardened with resolve.

    She seems to sink into the ground forming an oozing shadow, which flows towards the hatch she saw earlier along with Whyt. She avoids getting hurt by an arrow, and simply flows around it. It doesn't stop her from getting hit by a fireball, which impacts her in a burst of silver (damaged nanomachines). "Ow!"

    Upon reaching her destination, she coalesces back into the form of the trench coat-wearing woman she had before. Without bothering to check whether the door is locked, she opens a staticky portal, and simply passes through the closed door that way, then kicks it open from inside to allow Rydia's dragon to get through.

    Ah. The hostages are in shackles, but not chained to anything. "Hi, we're here to get you guys out!" she calls out, all in one 'breath'. "Sorry, this'll be rescue first, unshackle afterward." She pauses. "... this is gonna put a lot of strain on my CPU core," she mutters. She holds her hands out, as several staticky portals open, and she lets out a yell of exertion!

Yumi's onslaught takes out many of the Amal'jaa, but there are still many more. Some of which literally throw themselves in the paths of Uni's and Duncan's attacks to protect their leader, who casts another spell, calling forth lightning to come crashing down upon those still up here fighting, rapidly causing serious harm.

In the meantime, Whyt and Emily manage to get into the basement in which the captives are held. It's dark and dingy, with poor straw beds; but it's better than nothing. They managed a large number of captives however, and there's still a fair number of guards left here who respond to this effort to safe by trying to block people from going through the portals. Still, as the fight upstairs continues, more and more get drawn upstairs to help fight these interlopers attacking their leader.

Lightning, now, Duncan has no resistance to. So as the lightning begins to lance down, he makes an effort to dodge. But still he's clipped by one of the bolts. "Agh!" He stumbles, falling to a knee. With a grimace though -- and a clear effort -- he pushes himself to his feet again. No, he's not going to fall here and now.

But then he does something that seems to defy all common sense. Duncan starts trying to push forward, to get get into the thick of the Amal'jaa's forces, making certain that he's surrounded by only enemies. Because he has an idea planned -- this needs to end QUICKLY, otherwise they're going to lose someone else.

Once he's certain he's surrounded by enemies -- and also far enough away from his allies -- he pauses, holding his sword before him to display the flat to those in front of him. And he starts to gather his energy. The pressure in the area around him increases subtly... Oh... Oh, that's... a lot of energy he's building up. It's enough to make the area around his body start to take on the same red-edged black as his powers, though in a subtle enough way that one could miss it in amongst all the confusion. More clearly, the red-edged black glow of the sword expands, pulsates, thrums like a thing alive.

And then, with a loud ROAR, he swings that sword in a circular swing around him. In addition to any Amal'jaa foolish enough to get close to him possibly being hit by his sword as it slices through the air, a large circular blast of that red-edged power explodes from the blade, pushing outwards and seeking to slice through the enemies in its range.

    Tch.

    The trash intercepted some of her shots, making the XMB beams less potent. Black Sister lifts up into the air, and charges her railgun. "Brave Cannon!" The blue particle beam is a little different than the previous one. The XMB shifting to a more unstable focusing array. This beam causes a slight delay on detonation, but lasts longer allowing her to sweep the battlefield with it.

    The lightning does get a good strike, detonating one of her hip arrays, which causes a burst of red particles, and an outpouring of thick black smoke as the unit goes offline. "This is becoming troublesome... I hope the others can get the people out of there soon.

    A direct hit of lightning draws a pained yell out of Yumi - but she's taking the hit for Temulin's sake. That's not something she'll budge on. If she has to get fried to keep the downed auri woman alive, that's fine.

    It's also not going to be that easy to bring her down. The magical girl settles into a defensive stand, shifting here and there around Temulin to swipe at anyone foolish enough to run into melee range. But there's a lot of Amalj'aa who aren't in melee range. And she can't afford to move. So how...

    Ah.

    The next Amalj'aa that falls to Prominence, Yumi suddenly lunges forward and takes the lizard over her shoulder - and then she takes a careful grip, whirls herself around, and HURLS the hapless beastman towards one of the thaumaturges. And starts doing the same with the other bodies around her.

    Rydia... Takes a beat to catch her breath while Whyt starts to guide prisoners through Emily's portals. The green-haired girl picks herself back up and starts making her way toward the basement herself.
    The guards here will be a problem, and as they start to try and prevent the captive people from fleeing through the portals, Rydia picks one of them out.
    Whyt dissolves into mist for a moment and floats over to Rydia's intended target, before coalescing back into dragon form. The little dragon swipes its claws at the guard to get his attention... But it's a gambit. Just a distraction.
    Before Rydia leaps down the stairs, landing on the Amal'jaa's back. This causes a ruckus and a scrabble as she hooks her arms around his neck and begins to squeeze with all her strength.
    Her strength alone isn't all that much, which is why she reaches for the dagger at her belt...
    And puts that very dagger to use, raising it high before bringing it down- again and again and again. It's a series of deep, vicious, jabs; fully intent on ending this creature's life before it can even think to end hers.
    Because knowing creatures like this, it would most certainly be on it's mind, and that's why she gouges it non-stop with her dagger.

    Emily glares at the guards getting in the way of the escaping prisoners. "And you can just shut the hell up!" she snaps, even though they haven't actually spoken. Still maintaining the portals, she starts firing golden bolts of light at the guards. Her aim is slightly wobbly, but she's careful to dematerialize any bolts before they can actually hit the prisoners, and there's a lot of bolts regardless.

    She pauses, glancing back at Rydia. "Y'know what, I'd ask if you're okay, but I'm pretty sure the boat has sailed on that question," she says mildly.

Duncan's dark blade cuts through the amal'jaa like a hot knife through butter. They fall to his blade in large numberss, drawing more and more previously tasked with keeping an eye on the prisoners out just to help protect their leader. Uni's attacks deal with a few more, and gradually the Amal'jaa begin to fall back. Around their leader, into cover. Especially once the bodies of their peers being to fall upon them. Arrows, fire, ice, lightning and axes fly in retaliation; but they are clearly having trouble. At this point, they're not in position to go after Temulin.

Rydia deals with another guard, and Emily similarly provides lethal objections to the people getting in their way, allowing more captives to slip through the portals.

In the distance, something is kicking up enough dust to be noticeable from up in the air. It's approaching this position. Hard to notice on the ground, but clear from the walls or sky.

    Uni grunts as she dips and dives between incoming projectiles. A few strike hastily erected holographic screens made of blue hexagons, deflecting their trajectories just enough to miss. Some punch through, shattering the screen and digging chunks out of Uni's transformed body, leaving behind angry red damaged code in their wake. She looks up, snapping toward the dust on the horizon. "Company... we need to end this fast."

    Insted of continuing to harrass the groundpounders, she leaves that to Yumi and Duncan, instead she drops down into the basement where the prisoners are. "Emily, we need more firepower topside. Can you maintain the portals and go help, or could I maintain a portal for you with my Share Energy?" she asks, bashing an Amal'jaa in the face with the stock of her railgun.

    The tide of battle shifts. Yumi responds almost on reflex; instincts she wishes she knew the origin of, tell her to press forward the moment the Amalj'aa begin to fall back. And she does, breaking away from Temulin at last to go on the attack again. But this time, her onslaught is more focused; while she's weaving Prominence around her, she's stepping forward, advancing towards the big leader. Hopefully, the others can keep that one pinned long enough for Yumi to get in reach. If the group can bring the boss down, the morale blow alone should help quite a bit.

    Rydia deals with that guard alright. She certainly deals with him as she sticks him with her dagger again and again... Until the Amal'jaa sinks to his knees-- she continues to stab him. Until he collapses to the floor, she continues to stab and stab. Only when she realizes that he's twitching in response to being jabbed does she finally stop, and pause to stare at her bloodsoaked hands, like a victim of shellshock.
    It's Whyt nudging at her, and Uni coming down from the stairs that pulls the girl out of it. "... Go." She says. "Emily, go, Uni and I can handle this." She says wiping the blood from her hands and picks herself up from the dead guard to start shooing people out.

Good, that's what Duncan was hoping for. By making himself appear to be a greater threat on the battlefield, fewer people will be trying to stop the others who are trying to help those kept prisoner. Best to play it up then, right?

"FALL, CRETINS! To your DEATHS!" Duncan booms, his deeper-than-baritone voice echoing out. "I will teach you to FEAR the fires!"

Okay, so he's not much for heroic speeches, but he knows how to be frightening, so there's that.

Oh, they have ICE magic? That's something else Duncan has no real resistance to. That said, the ice spell that hits him in the shoulder also cools off the heated armor in that location. On the other hand the stumble also leaves him open to an axe in his side. Thankfully he's armored there, but these things are big and quite powerful, so it knocks the wind out of him. In fact that might be a trickle of blood from his lip there.

But he can play 'Split Lip or Intental Injuries?' later. No, these things have to die. An axe is swung at him and he raises his sword to block it, straining under the creature's strength, but pushing it back nonetheless, before a burst of effort and a swing of that sword throws the axe away, hopefully leaving that particular Amal'jaa open to his followup impaling strike!

Duncan doesn't notice the dust being kicked up just yet. He's on the ground, and can't really see for all the scaly (?) assholes around him. He also needs to pay attention so he doesn't die, since he made such an effort to wade into the thick of the Amal'jaa forces.

    Emily nods in greeting to Uni. "Shit," she mutters. "Uhh. Hm. It's gonna ... be ... touch and go. I'm not a miracle worker and I'm ... not sure I can move ... too far away from my dimensional fields ... but ..." She's clearly running herself ragged; there's a few silvery cracks forming on her coat.

    She sighs, and floats back up the stairs. "Friggin' ..." She raises her hand into the air, and sends up a miniature robotic eyeball, which flies up to get her a bird's-eye view of the battlefield. She then fires a whole swarm of golden bolts skyward, which arc through the air and descend onto the defending Amal'jaa and their leader.

Duncan's sheer persistance intimidates the amal'jaa beyond merely killing them, which helps the others approach. Yumi's approach cuts down more of them, and Emily's beams cut down a bunch more. The sleep spell cast upon Temulin finally wears off, and when she realizes where she is, she sounds pissed, leaping towards the leader with darkness flaring up, cutting through several more Amal'jaa before landing in front of him. "Bad idea."

Downstairs, Uni and Rydia's combined efforts continue to help the prisoners escape. More and more are making it out, even if there's still a fair amount of them left.

The dust cloud is getting closer.

    "We need to speed this up. There's someone, or something coming. I saw it while I was flying above..." says Uni, as she ushers more people through the portals, snapping off a few shots at the remaining guards before they can interfere. "I only hope we can do this in time."

    Bravette remains topside, giving overwatch of the battlefield. She does flit down to inform Duncan and Yumi of the approaching cloud, since they're likely not able to see it from within the fortress walls.

    Back in the basement, Uni summons some small objects, they look like water balloons with a stylized N on them. She throws these at some of the weaker looking prisoners. It should give them a little bit more energy to get away with.

    Rydia is clueless to the approach of the oncoming dust. Her focus is entirely on the prisoners as she tries to get the blood off her hands, wiping them down on her robes while she works. It's the weaker and more exhausted or even injured captives that Rydia puts her focus on next, laying her hands on them and funneling what little she knows of White Magic into easing their suffering so they can move through the exits faster.

Duncan's persistence may be intimidating, but it's also waning -- he's only human, and his strength will run out eventually.

No... no, that's not quite right. His energy might run out eventually... but as his energy runs out, his strength goes up. And continually dipping into that reserve of health to deal damage to these creatures is exacerbating both issues. Every cloud has a silver lining, after all!

He does not pursue the fleeing Amal'jaa -- there are enough enemies to seek here. Besides, there's a tiny flying robot coming in with intel! "A dust cloud?" He pauses to defend himself from an axe, to deflect a fireball with his sword. Then he asks, "How big? Can you see what's creating it?" Probably not without leaving the battle, and that's not a good idea.

Temulin rejoins the battle! Good, that's one more combatant here. He will leave the leader to her unless she looks like she needs help. For the time being, he uses his increasing strength to attack the Amal'jaa surrounding the leader -- less trouble for Temulin to have to worry about in facing the leader.

    Temulin is up and swinging. That's good. Yumi's steps become more sure and steadfast just seeing that. She wants to hit the leader, but they can't afford to ignore the others all around. Her massive blade sweeps around her, hewing forcefully - but on one spin, her eyes are drawn upward to the column of rising dust. Dots connect quickly. Something's coming. Probably a lot of somethings. Oh crap.

    "I think they've got reinforcements on the way!" Yumi yells out, hoping everyone can hear her over the din of battle; from there, all she can do is work even harder to thin out the Amalj'aa directly. Step one is going to be bringing down the leader, but all those others will still pose at least some threat - she's got to do something decisive. Shatter their morale and ranks in one go. It won't end the fight, but it'll bring them that much closer.

    A corner of her mind quails at the idea that springs to mind. At what it'll cost her - a cost she now has some inkling of. But she pushes that worry down remorselessly. For saving these people, for bringing this fight to an end sooner, for keeping her friends alive, that cost is worthwile.

    Yumi suddenly breaks into a charge, launching herself into a high jump that carries her sailing right over the Amalj'aa leader. As she drops down on the other side, falling in amidst the forces rallying behind their boss, the magical girl yells one more warning - to the dark knight on the other side of the enemy from her. "Temulin, be careful, it's about to get pretty warm over here."

    And then, for the first time, Yumi Tachibana goes all-out.

    There's a small outward rush of air, and the temperature around her rises by a good ten degrees. Her eyes begin to shine a soft gold, and the entire surface of Prominence starts to radiate golden-white light. Wisps of fire jump up around the blade, faint and brief, and the air around the weapon shimmers with heat.

    She sweeps the weapon around and swings hard for the Amalj'aa leader, one swing, two - and then turns herself around, sweeping her left hand across in a line that draws a fiery, gold-white line of magical explosion along the enemy lines. Her weapon swings, her hand unleashes another burst of magical sunlight; again and again, until the very air around her shimmers with the heat of her onslaught as if she's become a solar furnace in and of herself. She can't maintain this for long. But she doesn't have to. She just has to thin their numbers. And in this state, she's very good at that.

    Emily holds her hand out ahead of her. "Gonna have to close a few dimensional fields!" she calls over her shoulder. "Absolutely cannot keep this up without breaking something!" A few of the staticky portals start to close, giving herself some more breathing room. "Also, there's definitely a dust cloud coming! We'd better hurry this up!" Looks like her own eye in the sky caught sight of it as well.

    She opens up a small staticky portal in front of herself which comes out behind the Amal'jaa leader. A smirk forms on her face as she catches sight of what Yumi's doing. And then she lets out what is practically a fan of pale blue lasers, each aimed towards an enemy in her field of vision. "Need to diversify when I do this kind of thing, instead of just the doing the golden bolts," she mutters to herself.

Yumi's heat deals with some of the Amal'jaa by itself, desert-dwellers they may be, this is beyond that. Her blade cleaves through some of those who are still standing, diminishing their number even further. Emily's fan of lasers helps cut down some more, and Duncan is rapidly cutting them down. Temulin herself is doing her part to assist, taking hits in the process and channeling that into her strength

Uni and Rydia both help heal the wounded, and therefor slower, captives; speeding up the rescue. It's a good section of the crowd so far, especially as things get easier and easier with more and ore of the Amalj'aa drawn upstairs.

Outside, the dustcloud is starting to come real close. It's not just the cloud itself anymore, at this point the sound of at least a dozen pairs of chocobo talons hitting the ground at high velocity can be heard. Some of the Amal'jaa drop their weapons, trembling in obvious fear.

    The solar storm that is Yumi Tachibana doesn't burn for very long. Prominence never stops swinging, but she can't maintain that heat and that magic output terribly long, and soon she's back to just her swings, and the occasional smaller burst of solar light. And she's flagging a little besides; her stamina is great, but fighting this hard for this long takes a toll. Even still, she doesn't stop fighting. She only barely recognizes the sound of chocobo feet beating the ground, and she doesn't have any inkling that they might be friendly. If she were to think about it at all, she'd probably believe it was more people like the thieves and kidnappers they've run into before.

    Uni can /feel/ the impacts of a bunch of heavy cavalry rattling through the air. "Orderly line, children and the injured first. Help the person next to you. We'll make sure you get out of this." Uni says, trying to be encouraging, though she's clearly spooked by the approaching riders. "One foot in front of the other. We'll get you out of this." She's repeating herself, mostly to assuage the possibly terrified prisoners, but also to quell her own doubts. Bravette comes down to help guide people through the portals, pulling a pair of semaphore flags out of her Slipway and performing a series of arm motions trying to get the people to hurry

    This is going so slowly. Rydia is beginning to lose patience.
    But considering what's going on upstairs... It's probably for the best that she's down in the basement helping the prisoners escape.
    "Uni, this is going almost nowhere." She grunts at the Goddess Candidate. "I'm going to call us more help."
    And so the girl takes a deep breath and brings her fingers to her lips. A shrill whistle and the ground at her feet shifts and trembles.
    Before four squat, ugly, figures pull themselves free of the earth and stone.
    "Goblins!" She shouts. "Help us out here."
    There is a brief moment of bickering between the green-haired child and the lead goblin, which ends in Rydia cursing like a sailor and throwing a pouch of rupees at the squad to incentivise them.
    Which results in a small squad of four goblins joining the evactuation attempt.

    Emily turns around, and chortles at Bravette. "This'll be just like the Machinings," she says, rather uncharitably. "Ohhh, shit, I do not like the sound of those chocobos coming. Ughhh ..." She grimaces and rubs her eyes, and starts conjuring up a whole bunch of holograms, assisting Bravette with her guidance!

    She pauses as she watches Rydia argue with the goblins, and actually chuckles, shaking her head. "Oh jeez ..."

They've stayed too long, Duncan knows, and that dust cloud is beginning to look more and more ominous... particularly now that he can see it. And hear it! ...Are those chocobo talons? There won't be time to do much else here before they have to get going. Whatever's coming, he doesn't want to get in the way. Particularly not if it's something that's making the Amal'jaa freak out.

He ends his current scuffle with a particular Amal'jaa (it's logical to think that it probably looked to see the dust cloud and gave Duncan the opening to finish it off). Then he turns, and heads back to where that hatch was, raising his free hand to his mouth to whistle sharply. In answer, there's a loud, raspy, "WAAAAAAARK!" And then an albino chocobo comes charging up next to him, through the horde of beastmen.

He's just gonna get down there and grab somebody. Possibly two somebodies, actually, since he should be able to carry two people on his chocobo -- Nemesis is just as tough as he is, after all! "On the chocobo, if you want to live," he says curtly. Should he manage two, one will have to figure out how to balance in front of him while the other will just have to hang on behind him. If it's just one, he'll just put them in front of him so he can hang onto them. But either way, he should be able to STAMPEDE the hell out of here with these two on this crazy-ass albino chocobo.

Between the Goblins, Uni's work, Emily's assistance, and even Duncan's aid, a lot of the captives get evacuated. Yumi and Temulin keep the Amal'jaa busy up above

A dozen chocobos come storming through the shattered and charred gate, the people on their backs a mixture of what appear to be humans and tiny people much like thaumaturge faught in the mine. They are dressed in blues and yellows, and all of them carry patches depicting a scale balancing a gem on the left and a flame on the right. "I'm Flame Sergeant--" The leader of the group states, before he's cut off by the Amal'jaa leader's booming voice.

    "Lord of the inferno, hearken to our plea!"
    "Lord of the Inferno, deliver us from our misery!"

The other Amal'jaa follow his words for that line, but grow quiet as the sky darkens and he continues.

    "O Mighty Ifrit, Lord of the Inferno. Your humble servants beseech you! Grace us with your divine presence!"

The sun is darkened, before a flaming orb grows in its place, exploding as a large being falls from the sky in flame, landing amid the group. Somewhere in appearance between a demon, a hound and a lizard, this creature is larger than a mammoth, and looks towards the non-Amal'jaa, breathing out blue flames.

Temulin steps forwards, blocking the blue flames which seem incapable of touching her. Ifrit roars, before speaking. "Forsooth, thy frail mortal frame can serve as vessel to the blessing of but One. Yet I smell not the taint of another upon thee..."

Temulin holds up her blade, glancing back. "I'll keep him busy, recover a little. The Immortal Flames should have brought conjurers." One of them nods hurriedly, while Ifrit remains fixated upon Temulin.

    Though she might be exhausted and wounded, it's in moments like these that Yumi thrives. A god of fire before them, followers all around them, wounded comrades, and a lone ally stepping up to buy time... every fiber of her being screams at her to stand tall.

    "Like hell I'm letting you stare down that thing on your own. I'll be fine," Yumi says as she steps up, shifting Prominence into a ready grip.

>> SUMMARY[Yumi Tachibana] >> WE GO TOGETHER! -wait no

    Emily whirls around as she hears the noises going on. "Uh. Rydia, stay down there a minute," she says. She flies up into the air to get a personal look at the battlefield; her portals close in the process.

    She stares at Ifrit, the Amal'jaa, and the newcomers for a moment, her face unreadable. Actually, several emotions are crossing her face at the moment, none of them good.

    Then she sinks back down to the ground. "Yeah, you're gonna wanna stay down here, Rydia."

Duncan is some distance away when Ifrit drops out of the sky, owing to his mad charge out of the compound with what of the hostages he could conceivably rescue on the back of a chocobo. But he can still SEE it. That big of a spectacle is going to get attention from all around!

However... this is what Duncan was afraid of. They did get some of the captives out... but still almost half of them remained inside. That's... actually not bad, given what they were up against. But still. Can they do better? Do they have time, now that the summoning has been performed? Or is it too late?

With a frown, Duncan slides his passenger(s?) off with the others that escaped, should he be able to find their location. "Stay with the group," he instructs. Presumably that group is running the hell away, which would be the smart thing right now. Meanwhile though, Duncan turns Nemesis back towards the compound. He's going back in there!

Either to rescue more of the hostages, or to throw down with a literal god of fire...

    Uni nods to Rydia when she summons the goblins, but then all hell starts breaking loose and she turns to appraise what's going on. Midway up the stairs, her transformation gives out, and she stumbles the rest of the way. "... This isn't good." She racks the slide on her rifle, prepared to go down fighting if need be to buy time for the remaining prisoners to escape. "Lets hope my follower enclaves can generate enough Share Energy for me to use my Driver again..."

    Rydia had been busily shoving people through portals and out doors with the help of the goblins, when Emily tells her to stay downstairs.
    "What? Why--...?" She asks trailing off as she hears the voice of the Amal'jaa.
    Lord of the inferno.
    ... Lord of the inferno.
    Rydia's eyes shoot wide open as she realizes and understands what's going on.
    "No..." She says, voice barely a whisper. "... No..." She repeats, hoarse and strained, before she starts flying. Rushing for the stairs with a cry of "NO! DON'T DON'T LET HIM CALL IFRIT!"
    Racing harder and faster up the stairs than she's ever moved before in eher entire life, Rydia of Mist emerges at the mouth of the doorway back into the fortress proper just as the Lord of Flames is called into the world.
    "..."
    She stares. She stares in abject terror at this being- this demon of fire and flame called forth from the world beyond to terrorize this one, as Yumi and Temulin stand forward to face it. Rydia's whisper is lost in the chaos.
    "... Hylia help us..."